As policymakers focus on identifying and rewarding effective teaching, they should pay close attention to an important new study demonstrating the powerful effect of teacher collaboration in producing greater student achievement gains.
Using 11 years of student data in North Carolina, researchers have found [...]
Yesterday, Phi Delta Kappa released its annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. The 2009 survey surfaced some surprising sentiments held by the American people about teachers and teaching.
The must-read findings reveal, for example, that almost three-quarters (73%) of those polled [...]
In Monday’s Washington Post, education reporter Jay Mathews makes an excellent case for transforming teacher pay, dispensing with the antiquated single-salary schedule that only rewards years of experience, graduate degrees, and continuing education programs defined by bureaucracies.
Drawing on the experience of Jonathan Keiler, [...]
In her widely read Washington Post article of August 9, fourth-year teacher Sarah Fine makes a compelling case for researchers and reformers to include working conditions in estimating the effects of teachers on student achievement.
As Sarah relates in an essay titled "Schools Need Teachers Like Me; I Just [...]
I spent the three days recently working with our TeacherSolutions 2030 team at the North Carolina home of CTQ. With support from the MetLife Foundation, 12 expert teacher leaders from across the nation are defining how their profession must look in 20 years to [...]
Teaching working conditions are student learning conditions...
This past Monday, in his article As More Charter Schools Unionize, Educators Debate the Effect, Sam Dillon of the New York Times upped the ante in the predictable squabble among policy wonks over the role of teacher [...]
John Merrow’s recent PBS NewsHour broadcast on staffing our nation’s most challenging schools with Teach for America (TFA) recruits is a must see. Listening to Mr. Merrow’s interview with Paul Vallas, you would think the superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District has [...]
I know I can sound like an iPod in repeat mode. I admit to an obsession about the connections between teacher effectiveness and the conditions under which teachers work. But somebody has to crank up the noise around this issue and play it again and [...]
In a recent Newsweek op-ed column, Jonathan Alter, one of our nation’s most respected journalists, blames the poor state of public education on teacher unions that use tenure to prevent administrators from “figuring out who can teach and who can't.”
Over at EduWonk, teacher-tenure and teacher-union bashing continues. Much needs to be changed about teacher tenure, but many policy pundits ignore (for whatever reason) that union leaders do not solely construct nor are they in charge of a school district’s employment contract. Every contract is negotiated between administrators and [...]
The debates continue to rage over the merits of school districts recruiting younger, less experienced (and cheaper and potentially more compliant) teachers, versus those who are older, more experienced (and more expensive and empowered).
Policy pundits and journalists have few qualms about calling for any seasoned teaching veteran [...]
The Teacher Union vs. Teach for America debates are getting more and more tiresome — and seemingly not very productive. Over at the blogs of Mike Antonucci and Andy Rotherham (EduWonk) the teaching quality turf battles continue.
Maybe if we first clear a [...]
While shortages of qualified and effective teachers persist in high-needs schools, there is no shortage of rhetoric about the proper remedy.
It’s a rare week when a think tank or research center does not produce a report on what ails the teaching profession. For example just recently, the Center for [...]
I must say I am little weary of policy pundits who say that schools of education and master’s degree programs make no difference in the lives of teachers and the students they serve. Certainly there are some that do not. As Linda Darling-Hammond said in a recent interview, “probably [...]
Susan Moore Johnson and her Next Generation of Teachers Project (NGT) colleagues have just launched an impressive array of evidence and resources for policymakers and practitioners to use in rethinking conventional wisdom about teacher evaluation. Dr. Johnson’s website on peer assistance and review (PAR) — a district-union collaborative where [...]
Last week (April 27th) veteran journalist Jay Mathews of the Washington Post concluded — despite compelling counterfactuals from research studies — that our nation’s highest need public schools “need (youthful) energy more than experience” in their teaching ranks. In discounting a very thoughtful analysis of how untested teachers [...]
Be sure to check out Dan Brown’s latest Huffington Post essay on the considerable publicity of Teach for America and the misunderstanding of the human capital challenges facing our nation’s highest-need schools. Dan, an excellent young teacher in a DC charter school, offers up key facts typically ignored by [...]
I am off to meet with some very thoughtful educators, policymakers, and business leaders in Colorado this morning to assist the state in its efforts to strategically manage human capital for its public schools. Conventional wisdom is that the path to teaching quality is best taken by recruiting more talented [...]
Alexander Russo’s recent blog points to the growing unionization of teachers at KIPP (and other charter) schools. The issue is not just pay and the typical working conditions — class size and the like. As noted in the Chicago Catalyst story, “more than anything, (teachers) want a formal way [...]
Today’s Education Week commentary by Linda Darling-Hammond and David Haselkorn points clearly to how American policymakers are missing the boat when it comes to teaching quality. Instead of relying on false dichotomies (traditional versus alternative certification) and poorly designed studies, Ms. Darling-Hammond and Mr. Haselkorn note, “The answer [...]
Dan Brown’s recent piece on the HP is a must read. Dan, an excellent charter school teacher (and author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle), has penned an insightful retort to Nicholas Kristof's “effusive essay” on DC Schools Chancellor Michelle [...]
In an earlier post I was pretty hard on Mathematica – whose flawed research on effects of so-called traditional and alternative teacher education inform policymakers and practitioners of little if anything on what to do to improve the education of teachers. Now Jennifer Jennings (of EduWonkette fame) and Sean [...]
Yesterday’s speech by President Obama on education (and the teaching profession) was important. He pointed out even more clearly the need to advance performance pay, use data to track student progress (like in Long Beach, California), and take a hard look at charter schools (closing those that do not [...]
The debate over 21st-century skills seems, unfortunately, to rest on century-old thinking. Ed Week reported recently on the “flak” over whether schools should focus on the “soft skills” of creativity, collaboration, and communication — as called for by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills — or more on the [...]
Since 1984, MetLife has listened to America’s teachers. Its most recent national survey, released last week, celebrates the 25th anniversary of a unique endeavor to open a window for policymakers into the minds and daily professional lives of K12 educators.
The latest MetLife report captures [...]
Okay – here is another must read for those who are willing to raise questions about the research that's out there on the effectiveness of teacher education.
Check out the illuminating post by Aaron Pallas, who takes apart, piece-by-piece, the relevancy of the recent Mathematica study on the merits of traditional (university-based) [...]
Am I dreaming? Does Jay Greene now believe that standardized test scores (and value-added analyses) alone cannot be used to judge teachers? Maybe so. Reading his blog, I am struck that Mr. Greene -- a long-time proponent of most-everything-rests-on-test-scores in educational accountability, including how to identify and reward effective classroom teaching -- may be doing [...]
So I have been digging deeper into the recent Mathematica study, "An evaluation of teachers trained through different routes to certification.” In a February 11th post, I pointed out several problems with the study -- which looks at how students of alternative (AC) and traditionally certified (TC) teachers fare [...]
Education Week highlighted a just-released study by Mathematica Policy Research, summarizing the report’s findings that student test scores are “unaffected” by whether or not teachers matriculated through university-based traditional (TC) or more short-cut alternative (AC) certification routes. The study’s lead researcher, Jill Constantine, concluded “when students are placed with teachers with alternative routes [...]
At the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) this weekend, researchers Jim Wyckoff (who specializes in labor economics) and Pam Grossman (who specializes in teacher learning) presented more findings from their “pathways” project. The project combines a wide range of data on who enters [...]
Last week, the advocacy group National Council for Teacher Quality released its report card on state policies that advance toward or retreat from efforts to increase teaching effectiveness. The NCTQ report raises important issues and surfaces relevant facts -- but quickly loses [...]
Marc Fisher’s January 8th Washington Post article on school reform is highlighted with bold exclamation points. Improving teaching and learning does not require the slash and burn reform tactics touted by the so-called school reformers, who focus primarily on vilifying teacher education and the unions and paying teachers for [...]
Tom Friedman, in Saturday's New York Times, opined that tax cuts for teachers ought to be part of President-elect Obama’s stimulus package to move the economy forward — offering incentives for talented individuals to teach while “doubl(ing) the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers.” You know [...]
The luminous Eduwonkette has once again served up a shrewd rejoinder -- this time to Malcolm Gladwell’s recent essay in The New Yorker and his off-the-mark analogy relating the spotting of talented pro quarterbacks to the identification of teacher candidates who will be more effective in the classroom.
Great [...]
As reported in Education Week today, “it is no secret” the key to dramatic improvements in closing the achievement gap is teacher education. The Broad Foundation just awarded its $1 million prize to Brownsville Independent School District, “where nearly half of the students are English-language learners, nearly all [...]
This past week’s Time Magazine paints a poignant portrait of Michelle Rhee’s efforts as the chancellor of the DC Public Schools to transform her beleaguered school district. In some ways Rhee’s dual-pronged focus on 1) paying teachers based on once-a-year, multiple-choice standardized tests and 2)getting [...]
The Center for American Progress just released a report on the role of financial incentives in staffing high-need schools. The thoughtful report draws on lessons from the military, the civil service and government to frame how policymakers can attract and retain talented teachers to challenging schools. The authors of [...]
In a Nov. 14th post, the luminous Eduwonkette raises the issue of why there is so much attention paid to teacher certification in the United States. Drawing on the teacher quality research of Richard Ingersoll – who calls for “upgrading training and certification standards” — the erudite Ms. 'Kette [...]
